Brewed in Palestine (2019, 17 min) offers an intimate and charming portrait of the Taybeh Brewing Company in Palestine, the first micro brewery in the Middle East. A family-run business, the brewery was founded in 1994 following the first Oslo accord, when David and Nadim Khoury were inspired by their late father, Canaan David Khoury (1926-2002) to return to their home village of Taybeh northeast of Ramallah after spending more than 20 years in the US. Nadim’s children, Canaan and Madees, carry on the tradition. In 2013 the family launched Taybeh Winery, the only boutique winery in Palestine, which Canaan runs, and today Madees, 34, manages the brewery and is the only female brewer in Palestine and indeed in the Middle East. She oversees production of nearly 2 million bottles of beer annually.
The brewery operates under conditions of military occupation, which poses daily, even hourly challenges. That the brewery has flourished nonetheless is largely due to the determination and hard work of the resourceful Khoury family.
We spoke with director Emma Schwartz about her experience making Brewed in Palestine.
BPFF: How did you initially get into filmmaking?
ES: I got into filmmaking through photojournalism, and I studied it in college. My grandpa was a photojournalist, and we were really close when I was growing up. I just kind of fell in love with it, first with film photography and then digital. I then worked at a bunch of magazines in the photo department, including Time Magazine and Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ). Then I started recording things and just fell in love with that kind of storytelling. I left magazines to work on a couple of series, and then I started directing my own work.
BPFF: What was the process of deciding to create Brewed in Palestine?
ES: When I was a kid, I went back and forth between New York and the Middle East—Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. I have a lot of family in that region and ended up living there for a few years. I was living out there and traveling around, and settled in Palestine, and had always been curious about this brewery. I’d noticed that people were drinking it in both Israel and Palestine, and I thought that was interesting. I thought that this could be sort of a conversation starter, an easier way in for some people to what can be a really layered and complicated conversation about the West Bank and about Israel and Palestine.
BPFF: Can you share some background history about the brewery?
ES: The Khoury family has a long history going back hundreds of years in this village called Taybeh, which is a traditionally Christian village in Palestine. The father, Nadim, went to the United States for college, in Boston, actually. So that family has many roots in Boston, which is why I was so excited to have the film play at this festival, and I know that it’s exciting for them too. Nadim learned how to brew, and he sort of fell in love with it, even brewing in his dorm room in college. He then brought it back to the West Bank and said he was going to start a brewery. He and his brother started the first official Palestinian beer company, and it really took off internationally. I think it starts a lot of conversations. They’ve had tremendous success, and they worked so hard to get that. As you see in the film, it takes a lot to make beer in Palestine, let alone export it around the world.
BPFF: It’s clear from the film that this is a close-knit and determined family. It seems very much like a family operation.
ES: They’re so proud to be a family-run business, not just in Palestine, but also their family in Boston. The Boston division serves as sort of the other end of the import/export line and does a lot of the negotiating for importing and exporting to and from the US. I think it’s really fascinating how they’ve made this work against what seem to be impossible odds—to be able to get a product out of Palestine and across those borders. I have nothing but admiration and respect for what they do, because it’s so hard. Especially now during the pandemic, what they are going through—it’s just been completely exacerbated by the current situation. I think it’s something now we can all understand better—the limited movement, the danger when moving around, and how supply chains break down. That’s very much sort of what we’re seeing in this film—the way conflict can break down a supply chain, not necessarily a pandemic.
BPFF: What are politics of brewing in Palestine, under military occupation?
ES: It’s the checkpoints. It’s just checkpoint after checkpoint, and at every checkpoint, something could go wrong. There are so many variables, and they need to be able to make these very harsh deadlines. There are inspections, and their inspection guidelines change constantly, so they need to be in close communication. They have really good allies on both sides of the border, which I think is very important for their business. To be under occupation, the way that all Palestinians are right now—there is limited movement; there is danger to your life. So, it’s not just about getting a product out, but making sure that their drivers are safe; the product doesn’t get held up for so long that it skunks or goes bad; and so on. It’s always a financial risk whenever they go. It takes a lot to get to that point where the product arrives at the port, which is in Northern Israel. It’s only about four hours away, but it takes three days because of all the restrictions and checkpoints.
BPFF: The film shows the different layers of the occupation quite effectively—and the toll that they take on people and institutions. There is the military occupation, but there are also economic restrictions, and even environmental, the example in the film being access to water.
ES: I think the story of beer in Palestine is very much the story of Palestine. The story of what this beer has to go through felt very much to me like a metaphor for what Palestinians are going through. They have such limited access to water, although before Israel was established, they had water that they have had access to this water for centuries. I believe the water allocation is so far below what the WHO recommends, and that means Taybeh has had to be really creative with water and natural resources.
Also, they import ingredients, such as hops, so the same problems they face getting the beer out, they face getting the ingredients in. So, everything from the water to the ingredients, and assembling them—it’s just a tremendous feat.
BPFF: In the film one of the people you feature is Canaan, the lead engineer. It can’t be easy purchasing that brewing equipment in the West Bank, so just keeping the operation running seems like such an achievement.
ES: Canaan is an absolute genius. He has a degree in Engineering from Harvard. He’s really “wicked smaaaht” as you would say in Boston! They’re using the same equipment they’ve been using for a very long time. Canaan and Nadim are making it work. When they bottle and when they brew, Canaan is always watching the line, especially with the bottling process. A lot can go wrong. So many things can happen—beer bottles can explode, things like that. He will stop the machine and fix something really quickly; he’s just a genius. Watching him work was incredible—seeing someone who’s really in his element and a profoundly gifted engineer using that skillset to keep his family brewery alive. He’s at Stanford now getting his MBA to help his family with the business end of things.
BPFF: Can you tell us about the size of the operation? They seem like they are expanding, and now they offer quite a few different types of beer.
ES: It’s a really small, family-run operation. They do have a couple employees who have become like family who have worked there for a very long time, mostly people from Taybeh and the village next door. I never saw more than five or six people, even on big boxing and bottling days. Guaranteed that anything you touch with that label, someone in that family either brewed it or bottled it.
As far as the beer they offer, they have absolutely expanded. They have a new IPA, and when I was there, they were experimenting with some sour fermentation, although I don’t think that’s something they’ve released yet. As far as beers, they have the classic Golden, a White, and a Wheat. They have a darker one, and they’re always coming out with special editions. They had a Christmas beer when I was there around Christmas time. Any time of year you can guarantee they’re making something special, and if you go visit the brewery yourself over in Taybeh, you can try some of the more experimental things that Canaan is working on.
I forgot to mention also that he’s a master brewer. He got his certification in California, and I think he placed incredibly high on the exam. Nadim is also a certified master brewer. Madees, Nadim’s daughter, is also an incredible brewer herself and a remarkable businesswoman; she is really the glue of that operation.
BPFF: Like you say, she seems very much to be the person who keeps everyone planted on solid ground! Can you walk us through a typical day for her?
ES: After shadowing Madees for a couple of days, I was exhausted! It’s insane. On those days, she would wake up with the sun—I’m talking like 3 or 4 am to start brewing, because it’s an all-day process. When she was done for the day, they would travel to Ramallah, where they were doing a Christmas market. I went with her, and I was exhausted. She stayed up way later than I did. I just had to go home I was so tired. This woman is incredible, I don’t know when she sleeps! And then she went home and made cookies! She’s really so full of life and full of energy, and she is such a powerful businesswoman and she’s so determined and committed to the family business. Really, they all are.
Canaan has said that it helps a lot when it’s a family-run business, because everybody is equally committed, and I think that it really shows. Also, their workers have been there for so long that they are like family as well and they’re very loyal.
BPFF: Now that we have talked about the film itself, could you share a little about your process in creating it?
ES: I went out there by myself in December 2018 to film. I took all the equipment myself, including a drone. I worked with a local journalist named Alaa Daraghameh, who’s just an incredible talent and became a good friend. He and I worked together filming. I doing my master’s in journalism at Berkeley at that time, and I was making this documentary as my thesis film. A few weeks in, a classmate, Eva Rendle came to meet me to share some of the filming, which I really appreciated, for because it’s hard to run sound and drone and camera solo. I spent the next five months editing.
A lot of days I was alone with Madees in the Brewery. I really wanted to capture a verité feel, and it also was very important to me that the family tell their own story. I didn’t want to have to use any narration. I think it was important to see events as they unfolded.
That particular period ended up being one of the most violent times since the Intifada. It just ended up being a very tense time in the conflict, and it really shows in the film. It’s a real testament to what they go through in the West Bank, what it really feels like at some of its most dire moments and how limited people are in terms of range of motion and how unpredictable things can be when conflict breaks out. Seeing this family be so determined to overcome those challenges at such great personal and professional risk was amazing.
BPFF: How has the pandemic affected your rollout of the film?
ES: I was really lucky to have this film premiere at festivals in 2019. We had about a whole year of festivals. I think the last in-person festival was the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, which I was grateful to be a part of, because that is such a cool festival. It was like a dream. I was lucky enough to do an in-person festival run. Now it’s a lot of virtual screenings. I am grateful for places like the Boston Palestine Film Festival for doing virtual screenings, because I think the film can reach a wider audience that way. A virtual screening is still such an incredible opportunity, if not more so than a regular festival, which is so limited in the geography of its scope. I’m really grateful to the festival for soldiering on, even though I would have loved to come out to Boston and meet you all in person!
BPFF: Finally, what was your biggest takeaway from the film, and what did you enjoy most during the filming process?
ES: Working with the composer William Fritch was such an honor, and he really did a beautiful job of bringing this film to light. I think it’s a lyrical film, and I was glad to edit to his music, as he scored a lot of the film.
My favorite part of the moviemaking process would be absolutely just filming, spending time with this family. I feel honored that they let me into their lives in the way that they did and that I had the chance to get to know them back when we could travel and be with people. That was a tremendous privilege, to be let into their lives and have the great responsibility of conveying their story to the world. To me, this is a good film for this moment, to show overcoming tremendous odds and sticking together as a family.
I hope the film brings people a little bit of hope in this dark moment, but also shows the realities of life in the occupied West Bank. I think with a conflict that has gone on as long as this one, fatigue can set in. I think it’s so important to tell Palestinian stories—now more than ever—so we understand what their everyday lives are like. I am really grateful for dedicated film festivals like BPFF that showcase so many Palestinian voices and stories.
BPFF: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.
ES: Thank you!
Brewed in Palestine screens online October 16-25. View the full festival program and buy tickets here.